Today in Kimberley's History
February 10th
"Every day has a story about Kimberley's past."
On this day...
The tenth of February 1900 was a day of mourning for Kimberley. The town gathered to bury George Frederick Labram, the brilliant engineer whose inventions had helped sustain the besieged community. Yet even in death, there was no escape from the war. As mourners made their way to the cemetery, the Boer guns opened fire once again, turning a funeral into one of the most poignant moments of the Siege of Kimberley.
1900 – George Labram's Funeral Under Fire
On the evening of 10 February 1900, hundreds of Kimberley's residents gathered to pay their final respects to George Frederick Labram, who had been killed the previous day by a shell from the Boer Long Tom.
Labram had become one of the town's greatest heroes during the siege. As Chief Mechanical Engineer at De Beers, he applied his remarkable engineering skills to the defence of Kimberley, designing fortifications, improving essential services, and creating the famous gun Long Cecil, which enabled the town to withstand the Boer bombardment. His funeral drew many of Kimberley's leading citizens, including Cecil Rhodes, senior De Beers officials, military officers and ordinary townspeople whose lives had been touched by his work.
As the funeral procession left the hospital, tragedy almost struck again. The familiar boom of Long Tom echoed across the town, and a shell landed close to the mourners. During the service at the cemetery, more shells fell nearby at intervals of about fifteen minutes.
Many of those present believed that the Boers had somehow learned the time of the funeral and deliberately shelled the procession. Whether this was intentional or merely a coincidence has never been established, but to the mourners, it seemed an especially cruel interruption to their final farewell. Despite the danger, the service continued. Labram was laid to rest with the honours of a man whose ingenuity had helped Kimberley survive one of the most famous sieges in South African history.
Did You Know?
George Labram is buried in Kimberley's West End Cemetery. His funeral, held while shells continued to fall around the city, remains one of the most moving episodes of the Siege of Kimberley.
1900 – Long Cecil: Kimberley's Own Gun
118 days since the beginning of the Siege of Kimberley
As Kimberley mourned George Labram, the gun he had created remained one of the town's greatest symbols of hope.
When the siege began, Kimberley's defenders possessed nothing capable of matching the range of the Boer artillery. Rather than accept this disadvantage, Labram and the craftsmen of the De Beers workshops undertook an extraordinary engineering challenge. Working with limited materials and under constant pressure, they designed and built Long Cecil, the largest gun manufactured in South Africa up to that time. Completed in just twenty-four days, the weapon fired shells weighing around 13 kilograms (29 pounds) over several kilometres, allowing Kimberley to strike back at Boer positions.
Although Long Cecil could not equal the massive 100-pound shells of the Boer Long Tom, it had an enormous psychological impact. For the first time since the siege began, Kimberley's defenders were no longer completely outgunned. By the time of Labram's funeral, Long Cecil had become far more than an artillery piece. It represented the determination, skill and resilience of a town refusing to surrender.
Did You Know?
The original Long Cecil still survives today and stands on the stylobate of the Honoured Dead Memorial in Kimberley, less than two kilometres from the Solomon Edwardian Guest House. It is one of the city's most treasured historical artefacts.
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Kimberley's Story Continues
The events of 10 February remind us that courage during the Siege of Kimberley was not confined to the battlefield. Engineers, doctors, miners, craftsmen and ordinary families all played their part in defending the town. George Labram's legacy lives on through Long Cecil and the memorials that continue to tell the story of Kimberley's resilience during one of South Africa's defining conflicts.
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